I said, ‘My name’s . . .’ and he smiled for the first time ever when he interrupted with ‘Queenie – yes, I know.’

We’d been stepping out for about four months – every Thursday early evening, Saturday night and a walk on Sunday if it was nice – when I began to hate the back of his neck. It was bony and scrawny, looked more like the back of a heel with his ears sticking out like a knobbly ankle. And there was a vein on his temple that wiggled like a worm under his skin when he ate – just a little but enough to put me off my sandwiches, which we often packed up to eat in the park, by the fountains or under a tree. He had this way of screwing up his face as if he was wanting to dislodge a tickling hair from up his nose. He did it first when he met Auntie Dorothy. I had to ask her, ‘Is it normal?’

‘Didn’t see it, love,’ was all she said.

I don’t know how she missed it – it made him look really queer. And he dithered over change. He was paying for a pot of tea and two pieces of Simnel cake at Lyons, going through his coppers, putting them in lines on the table, then counting them off into his hand. Then doing it again to make sure, while the waitress was standing looking at him like he was backward. Did it at the pictures too, holding everyone up while he rummaged in his trouser pocket, jiggling it to hear the change then counting out his ha’pennies and threepenny bits. A man from the back of the queue complained that he and his wife would miss the sing-song.

But Auntie Dorothy said he was a gentleman. She spent most of our evenings together explaining to me why. Did he or did he not open doors for me? Only a gentleman would do that. He walked on the outside of me when going down the road. ‘You’ll not get splashed by a carriage,’ Auntie Dorothy told me.

‘Auntie, when did you last get splashed by a carriage?’

‘Well, a motor-car, then, or a tram. And don’t be cheeky.’

He stood up if I stood up and wouldn’t sit down until I sat down. And for two months all he did was shake my hand when we said goodnight. And when he did pluck up the daring to kiss me, he puckered his lips so tight it felt like kissing a chicken’s beak.

‘He don’t talk much, Auntie.’

‘That’s good – you’d not want a chatterbox.’

But, crikey, he lived in Earls Court with his father, he was a clerk at Lloyds Bank and he liked fresh air. Surely after four months there was more to know about him than that?

He spoke more with Auntie Dorothy than with me. First time he came for tea there she was sitting upright on her lounger, her corset back on but not doing much, wishful-thinking red lips painted on way past her natural mouth and an inch of grey roots on her hair that gave the impression that the rest of it, which was dyed black, was hovering, waiting to land. All three of us were listening to the dog licking its private parts when Bernard piped up to tell Auntie how his great-great-grandfather changed their family name from Blight to Bligh in the hope of reversing a run of bad fortune.

‘Did it work?’ Auntie asked. And he laughed all jolly. I just sat with my mouth open. He’d never said anything near half as interesting to me. ‘Do you think there’ll be a war?’ Auntie asked him. And he talked for a good ten minutes on how, unfortunately, he thought it unavoidable. Alone with Bernard I only ever heard my silly voice, making no more sense than when my teeth chattered with the cold, but the silence was just too loud for me.

‘He’s shy with you, love, and that’s as it should be,’ Auntie assured me. ‘You’re lucky there, Queenie. That man is a brick – you’ll be safe as houses with him.’

So I asked her, ‘Do you think we’re courting?’

‘Of course you’re courting,’ she told me.

‘Is that all courting is?’

And she said, ‘Well, what did you think it was?’

I’d seen girls who were courting. They looked dreamy-eyed on the world, floating on feet that never felt the ground. They plucked at daisies for most of the day, sighing, ‘He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me’. When they danced, their best boys held them so close you couldn’t pass a paper between them. And when they kissed, it was rapture that made their legs buckle, delight that made it taste of nectar. Courting girls thought their best boys to be fashioned by the hand of God Himself.

I moved the dressing-table mirror to see what all the other Queenies thought of courting Bernard. Not much. They were all a bit down in the mouth about it.

‘Bernard, I’ve enjoyed our little trips but I don’t think we should see each other any more.’ I said it on a park bench, as a drizzle of rain was just starting to polka-dot his coat. Like a baby who’s just been slapped but doesn’t know it smarts yet, it happened ever so slowly. His face went from plain-day, through quizzical, then headlong into hurt. I never thought Bernard could be caught by feelings but there they were. Unmistakable it was, the quivering lip, the watering eye. He was about to cry. It was the most exciting thing he’d ever done.

‘No, Queenie, please don’t say that. I’ve grown very fond of you. Our walks mean a lot to me.’

‘I didn’t know you’d be so upset,’ I said. I thought only women felt emotion – all men far too practical for such silliness.

‘Yes, Queenie, I really am very fond of you. I know I’m older than you and perhaps not as gay as you’d like. But over these months . . .’ He stopped, turned his head away from me and there it was, the back of his neck.

‘It’s just, Bernard . . .’ I began, but he spun back fast, held my hands tight in his.

‘Please, please don’t say any more. Just give me another chance. Please, please, Queenie . . .’ And he was crying, only one tear but crying none the less when he said, ‘I was hoping to persuade you that we should get engaged.’

Oh, blinking heck, I thought, which is not what you should think when your best boy’s just proposed. ‘Well, never mind, then, I’ll see you again on Thursday, Bernard,’ was what I said. And that was how it was left.

We’d been for a walk along the river up to Big Ben. It wasn’t late when Bernard and I reached the sweet shop. I couldn’t get the door open. I thought it was just stiff – we’d had a lot of rain. It cracked an inch but then wouldn’t budge. There was something behind it. Bernard had a go using his shoulder as I called out for Auntie. I was about to yell again when Bernard said, ‘She’s behind the door on the floor.’

And I teased him, ‘That rhymes – you’re a poet, Bernard,’ before I’d quite realised what he’d said.

She was laid out on the floor clutching the closed sign to her breast. Pale as sorrow apart from her wishful-thinking red lips. And as out of place as a fallen tree trunk on a road. I thought if I could just return her to her natural position on the lounger she’d be all right.

‘Auntie, get up?’ I said, as Bernard knelt beside her feeling her pulse and putting his cheek right to her nose.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked him, but I got no reply. It was then I noticed the two coiffured back paws of Prudence sticking out from under her like the wishbone on a chicken. Bernard jumped when I screamed at her, ‘Auntie, you’ve fallen on the dog!’

And then I’m not quite sure what happened. But Bernard was there, pulling me away from Auntie, taking me into the back room, sitting me down on the lounger and saying twice, maybe three times or more, ‘Queenie, are you listening? Just stay here. It will be all right. Just sit here until I come back.’ I could see him through the window glass in the door putting a blanket over her. Then leaving the shop and coming back in with Mr Green from the greengrocer’s next door. Some other people came in, I know they did – whispering and shaking their heads while Bernard was trying to make me drink some foul sweet tea.

‘What’s happened to her?’

‘There’ll be an ambulance coming soon.’

‘Will she be all right? What about the dog? Should you fetch her in here? Only she’ll fret and bark when they come.’